Inez—And mine, for my sister by birth and "for love's sake."
Gentola—Friends, this is a strange christening, and for a time, I fancy that my new name will to me seem equally strange. I promise you that I shall strive to be all that it signifies.
Bruno—We chose the name because we know that it indicates your nature, which is in tune with all that is best in the human.
Now, Gentola̤, what I have to say is in line with the pursuits of our friends, Agassiz and Von Humboldt, consequently, quite aside from the science which engages me. But, having, with George, and other friends, explored this portion of Ento it is thought that I am qualified to offer you such information as may be pertinent to the present stage of our mission. On Ento during a remote age, there existed certain amphibious creatures so enormously large and unwieldy that only through their prodigious strength could they have coped with other fierce, active, gigantic forms of that early time. Scarcely can one realize their size, their uncouth forms or their extreme ferocity, which impelled them to a continuous warfare against not only their own kind, but against other species equally huge and aggressive. As has been said, Spirits, on our side of life, sufficiently progressed, can and do visit Planets, not only of our Solar System, but of other systems of worlds, and now, as at all times, there are Planets of our and other systems evolved to a degree analogous to that of Ento, during the age in which these and similar creatures existed. Through observation of conditions obtaining on such Planets, we arrive at a conception of the appalling conditions that must have existed on Ento during the Reptilian Age, when the steaming waters teemed with countless life forms and on unstable shores huge creatures fought to the death, filling the hot, moisture-laden atmosphere with their savage cries, roarings and hissings.
Cunning, sagacity, instinct, call it what we may, is an accumulated unfoldment of innate ability expressed as the sum of inherited experiences; hence, on Ento, in that age, the cunningest, the strongest, the most active and tenacious of certain species survived the many calamitous occurrences which swept out of existence myriad reptilian creatures. Yes, modified through environments, even yet pigmy representatives of ancient, huge ancestors inhabit the watery divisions of Ento.
Previous to the spiritualized man epoch there was an enormous production and destruction of life forms, and in time Ento became a vast repository of fossilized remains. Time, climatic changes and other causes so contributed to their destruction that only petrified specimens of the larger and later reptiles are occasionally discovered. How long ago did the earliest Ento humans appear? Gentola̤, the germinal man of Ento appeared when the first life cells swarmed in the warm waters of the young Planet. But the evolved human, the Spiritualized Man, became conscious of himself long after the great creatures of the Reptilian Age had of necessity yielded place to no less huge quadrupeds, who were more highly evolved expressions of life.
When one speaks of an event as having occurred some hundreds of thousands of years gone, in the mind of an uninformed auditor it is likely to occasion a sense of incredulity. But I safely may say that the lapse of time which merged the Reptilian into the Mammalian Age, during which came to the evolved human animal his crowning glory, a spiritualized, conscious existence, if measured by years, might be compared with the countless sands upon the seashore.
Now we must recur to the matter under consideration. As you perceive, this division of the plain extends from the base of the mountain to the verge of this extensive morass, which rests in a basin-shaped formation of limestone. The plain itself is the result of ages of attrition and disintegration of the foothills of the mountain chain, and the morass is the result of many centuries of accumulated remains of vegetable growths and débris washed from mountain and plain into the basin of what once was one of a chain of fresh water lakes. Its southern rim is a rather narrow ledge of limestone, once of considerable elevation, but now a mere barrier between the morass and a much lower level. Prior to the filling up of the lake it extended westward quite thirty English miles, where it connected with a series of smaller lakes leading into a great fresh water lake known to the Entoans as Loisa̤ Bascama̤, of which later on you will learn more. For the double purpose of draining the morass, thus rendering it tillable, and also that the mountain streams flowing into it may be used for irrigation of the lands southward at the foot of the ledge, a great basin is being excavated, into which they will be led. Already the ledge has been pierced to afford them egress.